Anticaking agent in the food industry, especially in the dairy and cheese industry, is defined as any safe and suitable food ingredient which, when added, should prevent lumping of shredded, diced or chunked dairy product, such as cheese, during storage at room temperature or refrigerator or freezer. Such a dairy product with anticaking agent in it should be easy to handle at the time of applying on the final food product. Some cheeses, after they are chunked and if the anticaking agent is not used, will cake and are very difficult to handle. This is a serious problem especially with high moisture and high fat cheeses. Currently, at least 50% to 75% of the hard and semihard cheeses are either diced, shredded or chunked for sale in grocery stores, institutions, and major restaurant chains in the United States.
Several anticaking agents are commercially available, such as cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, cellulose impregnated with glucose sugar and glucose oxidase enzyme, silicon dioxide, and sodium aluminum silicate. The major drawbacks of the existing anticaking agents are as follows:
1. Relatively expensive.
2. Deteriorates the product functionality in terms of performance in the finished products.
3. The product efficiency is questionable depending on the chemical specification of the cheese.
4. Too much dusting in the packaging room.
5. Health hazard to workers.
6. Excessive, unwanted bacteria and yeast and mold contamination.
Primarily, anticaking agents are formulated to include compounds which will eliminate sticking. One commonly used anticaking compound is cellulose, which is a fibrous vegetable material. Some formulations include starch in the anticaking agent, and many employ cellulose in combination with dextrose sugar and glucose oxidase. In the last mentioned case, the intent is to reduce oxygen in the packaged treated product in order to eliminate yeast and molds and, at the same time, to prevent the treated product from caking. One drawback with this kind of system when applied on pizza pie is that dextrose, used in anticaking agent, will increase browning of cheese when pizza pie is baked.
Also, the efficiency of such procedures to perform consistently is highly questionable because of the variance in chemical specifications of the cheeses. Enzymatic reactions require proper temperatures, moisture, pH, and, most importantly, time to react and produce the final result. In the pizza industry, it is a known problem that higher use of cellulose based anticaking agents tends to interfere with baking qualities of cheeses in terms of melt and browning. This problem is recent in origin because, formerly, temperatures of pizza baking ovens were maintained at 400.degree. to 475.degree. F. More recently, with the concept of fast served foods such as five minute pizza for lunch trade and 30 minute home delivery of pizza, pizza is baked at 575.degree. to 650.degree. F. With this higher temperature baking, the problems associated with cheese and anticaking agents are magnified. A serious problem is excessive browning and scorching of cheeses on pizza pie at such elevated temperatures.
In the prior art, flour has not been used as an anticaking agent on cheese, especially if the cheese will be used on pizza pie. Although flour may have a superior functionality in terms of reducing the stickiness of cheese, flour seriously interferes with the melting properties of cheese on pizza pie. Consequently, despite the economy of using flour as an anticaking agent, the food industry has been unable to take advantage of using food grade flours as anticaking agents in shredded cheese products, especially those intended for use on pizza pie.